


Our Oral History

by Tikor



Series: Castebook:  Full Moon [6]
Category: Exalted
Genre: Gen, Lunars, Roleplaying Character, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 06:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13564431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: A record of the Great Whale’s dreams.





	Our Oral History

_What follows is a record of the Great Whale’s dreams, as shown on his chromatic skin, to the best of my ability to interpret them. I kept the records for my own purposes, at first because I thought they were some kind of lesson, like the visions I saw while he was awake. Then, once I found out they were not, to better understand my mentor and the times he lived through, fragmentary and sensory as they are. Without Leviathan’s waking mind to guide me through the visions and make sense of them, they are primal expressions of his unconscious devoid of context and often lacking discernible meaning. I pass these experiences on to you, dear reader, to puzzle out for yourselves or to tell of in stories fit for the Oral History._  
\- Swims in Shadows.

The Dreamer looks upon a city on the water. It has no shore, no bedrock on which it sits. It moves with the currents to visit the islands of the West. It eats the energy of the waves to light its lights and heat its hearths. For all that, the people who dwell there live as one would in any city - laughing, fighting, eating, raising their children. They do not pray to it, and yet it blesses them with health and safety better than any god. Atop its highest spire shines a light as bright as the sun. The Dreamer is drawn there, though it burns him. He returns again and again, to this city and the sun atop it.

The Dreamer sees a great hall with three circles. The lowest, smallest circle is gold, with three hundred seats equally spaced around its curvature. The middle circle has four hundred seats - a silver crescent with three hundred seats around and a many-colored arc, yellow, blue, red, green, and violet, with one hundred seats to complete the circle. Surrounding them both high above is a circle of five colored arcs, blue, white, red, black and green, with one thousand seats evenly spaced along the diameter. No one is seated there; session is not in. The dreamer goes to a seat on the silver crescent and reads the names: Gosuke, Cloud of Heavens, Sendro-sama, Leviathan. At this last he stops and seats himself. The chamber echoes with the small sounds of cloth rustling and boots stepping lightly on stone.

The Dreamer dreams of an island loved by Gaia but devoid of her touch. The rocks are bare, no trees grow, no bird calls, no seal barks. It is silent, but not filled with death. No spirits or ghosts haunt the isle. It as if life never was, that Gaia’s blessing never engulfed this small outpost in the sea. There is a line in the sea moss, easily seen when the waves recede from the rocky shore. The Dreamer remembers the stories of a life-filled Isle. He tries to see the living crystal technology he’s read about overlapping the bare rocks of the island, but his mind’s eye does not believe the picture it creates. It is too different from what his eyes see. 

A steaming lagoon sends a mist above the volcano in which it is carved to fall back to the cold surrounding sea. Crystals grow in the warm water; looking into each shows a memory from a soul that has passed through Lethe. A feast fills the tables abutting the sea and the lagoon both. Turtles shells are carved into each, elaborately creating the illusion that they are nothing but wooden creatures holding still, stacked atop one another from the eating surface down through the ground and beyond. A great man-turtle sits at the place of honor, bowing to his people who cheer him with heartfelt praise. The Dreamer claps louder than the rest, and says a prayer for the safety of Terrakun and Vajkaimal both.

The Dreamer walks between the beached bellies of ships not yet made. Clangs and fire are behind him, before him is the exit, where a thriving city takes him in. He is shown deference and recognition at every turn, but he does not acknowledge the supplicants, courtiers and lesser spirits who address him. Every building he passes hums with magic, opulent beyond dreams, power in building form. He looks not at the breathtaking architecture, the bound demons at every intersection, or the canals in which the brightly lit elementals swim. Instead he walks up to an open gate and demands entrance. What blocks him from simply walking through is unclear, but he respects it all the same. Another comes to the precipice and addresses the Dreamer as Admiral. She has the sun’s mark on her forehead, wings on her back and a golden sword at her waist. They say no more before the dream ends.

A arched gate made of woven silver wire, Starmetal by my guess, embedded with emeralds faces the Dreamer. Its hinges hold no doors. Looking through the portal shows no light on the other side. The Dreamer approaches until the blackness overtakes his vision. When light returns, he is on an island deeply covered in snow. A Manse with a purple dome shines the Northern light off of its surface. Winged people fly about, and mingle with finned and gilled folk at the water’s edge. No unmodified human is in sight. The Dreamer lives among them for five days, learning their history, their hopes and dreams, their ways. Then on the fifth day he awakes standing on the other side of the arch, easily peered through with nothing amiss, on the opposite side by which he entered.

A creature seven feet tall with red eyes, bright green skin and stark white hair lays bloodied before the Dreamer. The Dreamer wipes the blood from its cheek, feeling the coarseness of its skin, like a shark's. The Dreamer feels the white hair, soft as spider’s silk. Then the Dreamer grabs the creature’s throat. It claws and struggles and strains, but the Dreamer does not waver. He does not release it as its last gasp shudders through the creature’s frame, and holds its airways closed for another hour past. Then he throws the lifeless form on the ground, and rips open its chest. Taking out the heart, he drinks of its blood. In the pool that spills out, the Dreamer sees his reflection, a creature seven feet tall with red eyes, bright green skin, and stark white hair.

A bird flies in the air, but the Dreamer overtakes it in the sky. When the dreamer looks to his left and right he does not see wings, but instead metal. Metal that flies. Behind him are a thousand thousand such flying metal boxes with wings. They land on ships that swallow them as their wings fold upwards. The Dreamer takes off his helmet, and greets someone he cannot see. That person answers him from nowhere and everywhere. 

The Dreamer sees the sands shimmer the air above the hot dunes from the safety of the sea. A giant beast lays chained, and its master before him. They writhe, but not from the heat. Each have the skin of lizards and cooling frills deployed. Their movements slow and become hindered. Cries of some sort carry out over the water, but their coherence is lost to the wind. When the beast and its master stop moving they are as still as stone. A spirit tells the Dreamer that the ceremony is over, and they turn to leave the calcified statues, still bound by their restraints, reflecting the Southern sun.

The Dreamer sits in a chair twice as wide as he is and three times as tall, surrounded by similar furnishings. The moon hangs in a starless, cloudless sky. A garada bird of flaming plumage sits across from him. To his right, a bear whose every breath is smoke, to his left, a Solar by my guess due to the orichalcum of his armor. They stare at a table that shows the markings of a map. When the garada-bird waves its wing, the table changes. It shows the West, but with far more islands than I have ever known. It shows scenarios of forces marching in from the Wyld, and how the Exalted host and their divine allies would meet them, how quickly, and what would be out of reach to save in time, given different speeds of their enemies. The Dreamer hardly watches his companions, the map has his entire attention. 

The Dreamer stands upon the deck of a flying ship looking down over the side. Though the day is clear, no ground meets his gaze, only other ships bearing markings whose meaning it lost to me. They face an army on the wing, flapping and crying challenge to the ship-bound force the Dreamer counts himself among. All are wrapped in tight furs, hardly any skin showing to the frigid wind, with strange contraptions on their backs. Thunder claps from no clouds, and the Dreamer gives the signal to advance. 

The Dreamer stands on a crystal thicker than a yeddim. On one side is sea, the other, air; the curvature of the crystal separates the two. It stretches farther than his sharp eyes can see both North and South, cabled in place. Small streams of water emerge from the air side; they smell fresh against the salt-wind to the West. The Dreamer’s many ships sail vigilantly out on the sea, but nothing approaches. This time, a show of force is sufficient to keep disaster at bay.

The Dreamer sees his reflection from the sheen of adamant in front of him. With a command, it parts for him, revealing a space from which no light emits. The Dreamer enters. Spinning in darkness, waves approach from the endless void to buoy the Dreamer. Light appears in the sky, and a floating city shines into existence. He swims to the edge and hauls himself up. He climbs the stairs to the very pinnacle of the city. Before him appears a woman in golden light. The Dreamer recognizes her, and yearns for her, but he does not approach. Instead he flees, shattering the constructs with his mind, shouting a command to open the door back to reality. Outside the barrier he speaks with the console. Their conversation ends in the deletion of all records from that day.


End file.
